About Me

Monday, April 2, 2018

Neocon power couple Robert Kagan and Victoria Nuland helped launch new Cold War with Russia. In Sept. 2013 Nuland undertook ‘regime change’ in Ukraine, reminding us that $5 billion US tax dollars had been invested in Ukraine’s “European Aspirations”-Robert Parry, Consortium News, 3/20/2015

Not only does the broader community of neoconservatives stand to benefit but so do other members of the Kagan clan, including Robert’s brother Frederick at the American Enterprise Institute and his wife Kimberly, who runs her own shop called the Institute for the Study of War.Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution(which doesn’t disclose details onits funders), used his prized perch on the Washington Post’s op-ed page
on Friday to bait Republicans into abandoning the sequester caps
limiting the Pentagon’s budget, which he calculated at about $523
billion (apparently not counting extra war spending). Kagan called on the GOP legislators to add at least $38 billion and preferably more like $54 billion to $117 billion:

“It will annoy the part of the Republican base that wants to see the government shrink, loves the sequester and doesn’t care what it does to defense. But leadership occasionally means telling people what they don’t want to hear. Those who propose to lead the United States in the coming years, Republicans and Democrats, need to show what kind of political courage they have, right now, when the crucial budget decisions are being made.”

Yet, if it weren’t for Nuland’s efforts as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs,the Ukraine crisis might not exist.A neocon holdover who advised Vice President Dick Cheney,Nuland gained promotions under former Secretary of State Hillary Clintonand received backing, too, from current Secretary of State John Kerry.

Confirmed to her present job in September 2013, Nuland soon undertook an extraordinary effort to promote “regime change” in Ukraine.She personally urged on business leaders and political activists to challenge elected President Viktor Yanukovych.

She reminded corporate executives thatthe United States had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations,” and she literally passed out cookies to anti-government protesters in Kiev’s Maidan square.Working with other key neocons, including National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and Sen. John McCain, Nuland made clear that the United States would back a “regime change”against Yanukovych, which grew more likely as neo-Nazi and other right-wing militias poured into Kiev from western Ukraine.

In early February 2014, Nuland discussed U.S.-desired changes with
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt (himself a veteran of a
“regime change” operation at the International Atomic Energy Agency,
helping to install U.S. yes man Yukiya Amano as the director-general in 2009).

Nuland treated her proposed new line-up of Ukrainian officials
as if she were trading baseball cards, casting aside some while valuing
others. “Yats is the guy,” she said of her favorite Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

Disparaging the less aggressive European Union, she uttered “Fuck the EU” and brainstormed how she would “glue this thing” as Pyatt pondered how to “mid-wife this thing.” Their unsecure phone call was intercepted and leaked.Ukraine’s ‘Regime Change’

The coup against Yanukovych played out on Feb. 22, 2014, as the neo-Nazi militias and other violent extremistsoverran government buildings forcing the president and other officials to flee for their lives. Nuland’s State Department quickly declared the new regime “legitimate” and Yatsenyuk took over as prime minister.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had been presiding over the Winter Olympics at Sochi, was caught off-guard by the coupnext door and held a crisis session to
determine how to protect ethnic Russians and a Russian naval base in
Crimea, leading to Crimea’s secession from Ukraine and annexation by
Russia a year ago.

As the new Kiev government launched a brutal “anti-terrorism
operation” to subdue an uprising among the large ethnic Russian
populations of eastern and southern Ukraine, Nuland and other American neocons pushed for economic sanctions against Russia and demanded arms for the coup regime. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]

In May 2014, Kagan published a lengthy essay in The New Republic entitled “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” in which Kagan castigated Obama for failing to sustain American dominance in the world and demanding a more muscular U.S. posturetoward adversaries.

According to a New York Times article about how the essay took shape and its aftermath, writer Jason Horowitz reported that Kagan and Nuland shared a common world view as well as professional ambitions, with Nuland editing Kagan’s articles, including the one tearing down her ostensible boss.

Though Nuland wouldn’t comment specifically on her husband’s attack on Obama, she indicated that she held similar views.
“But suffice to say,” Nuland said, “that nothing goes out of the house
that I don’t think is worthy of his talents. Let’s put it that way.”

Horowitz reported that Obama was so concerned about Kagan’s
assault that the President revised his commencement speech at West Point
to deflect some of the criticism and invited Kagan to lunch at the
White House, where one source told me that it was like “a meeting of equals.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama’s True Foreign Policy ‘Weakness.’”]

And, whenever peace threatens to break out in Ukraine, Nuland jumps in to make sure that the interests of war are protected.
Last month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President
Francois Hollande hammered out a plan for a cease-fire and a political
settlement, known as Minsk-2, prompting Nuland to engage in more behind-the-scenes maneuvering to sabotage the deal.

In another overheard conversation — in Munich, Germany — Nuland mocked the peace agreement as “Merkel’s Moscow thing,” according to the German newspaper Bild,
citing unnamed sources, likely from the German government which may
have bugged the conference room in the luxurious Bayerischer Hof hotel
and then leaked the details.

Picking up on Nuland’s contempt for Merkel, another U.S. official called the Minsk-2 deal the Europeans’ “Moscow bullshit.”
Nuland suggested that Merkel and Hollande cared only about the
practical impact of the Ukraine war on Europe: “They’re afraid of damage
to their economy, counter-sanctions from Russia.”

According to the Bild story, Nuland also laid out a strategy for countering Merkel’s diplomacy by using strident language to frame the Ukraine crisis.

“We can fight against the Europeans, we can fight with rhetoric against them,” Nuland reportedly said.

NATO Commander Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove was quoted as saying that sending more weapons to the Ukrainian government would “raise the battlefield cost for Putin.” Nuland interjected to the U.S. politicians present that “I’d strongly urge you to use the phrase ‘defensive systems’ that we would deliver to oppose Putin’s ‘offensive systems.’” Nuland sounded determined to sink the Merkel-Hollande peace initiative even though it was arranged by two major U.S. allies and was blessed by President Obama. And, this week, the deal seems indeed to have been blown apart by Nuland’s hand-picked Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, who inserted a poison pill into the legislation to implement the Minsk-2 political settlement.

The Ukrainian parliament in Kiev added a clause that, in effect, requires the rebels to first surrender
and let the Ukrainian government organize elections before a
federalized structure is determined. Minsk-2 had called for dialogue
with the representatives of these rebellious eastern territories en
route to elections and establishment of broad autonomy for the region.

Instead, reflecting Nuland’s hard-line position, Kiev refused to talks with rebel leaders and insisted on establishing control over these territories before the process can move forward. If the legislation stands, the
result will almost surely be a resumption of war between military
forces backed by nuclear-armed Russia and the United States, a very dangerous development for the world. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine’s Poison Pill for Peace Talks.”]

But don’t think that this unlocking of the U.S. taxpayers’ wallets is just about this one couple. There will be plenty of money to be made by other neocon think-tankers all around Washington,including Frederick Kagan, who works for the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, and his wife, Kimberly, who runs her own think tank, the Institute for the Study of War [ISW].

According to ISW’s annual reports,its original supporters were mostly right-wing foundations, such as the Smith-Richardson Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, but it was later backed by a host of national security contractors, including major ones like General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and CACI, as well as lesser-known firms such as DynCorp International, which provided training for Afghan police, and Palantir, a technology company founded with the backing of the CIA’s venture-capital arm, In-Q-Tel. Palantir supplied software to U.S. military intelligence in Afghanistan.

Since its founding in 2007, ISW has focused mostly on wars in the Middle East, especially Iraq and Afghanistan, including closely cooperating with Gen. David Petraeus when he commanded U.S. forces in those countries. However, more recently, ISW has begun reporting extensively on the civil war in Ukraine. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocons Guided Petraeus on Afghan War.”]

To be fair, the Nuland-Kagan mom-and-pop shop is really only a microcosm of how the Military-Industrial Complex has worked for decades: think-tank analysts generate the reasons for
military spending, the government bureaucrats implement the necessary
war policies, and the military contractors make lots of money before
kicking back some to the think tanks — so the bloody but profitable cycle can spin again.

The only thing that makes the Nuland-Kagan operation special perhaps is that the whole process is all in the family.”————————

Comment: America’s political class
is the greatest force for human suffering in the world today. “Neocons”
at one time were considered fringe, lunatic Republicans. Now they’re
mainstream.If the Washington Post and NY Times are on your side you’re home free.

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Blog editor's note: Sorry for variations
in type in above post. This was the best I could do. Google's
preference is that the entire post be illegible.